M.L. Emmett

You breathed your last breath from the air
in this room;
that threadbare Persian carpet
holds flakes from your skin;
...

Look in the mirror and what do you see?
This is your golden time, your early spring
A dew-fresh face, peachy and wrinkle free
You are sweetest rosebud near blooming
...

Young women know all about style -
how to fix the decimal point
between them and their mothers
differentiate themselves
...

Poems find a space for themselves
in chaos.

Poems are the wormholes
...

The poor keep moving
as if relocation
could reframe the algebra.
...

Poems are fingers of the past
catching memories that fall

Poems colour pure memory
...

~ for Angela Scuteri ~


Shadows hold their breath
...

Be strong
imagine yourself
in one of those death chambers
with the stench of mortal sweat on every person
...

The scent of death
lingers for years
in a place
...

In the seventies
we brought back silks and saris
hot with colours
that shocked the nights
...

In Winnipeg
they dig the winter graves
in autumn
before the sun sleeps
...

Inspired by Robert Pinsky


Morning sun on his face
...

for Philip Larkin


Soundless dark of wakeful night
...

‘...We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep'
Shakespeare The Tempest Act IV.i.156
...

Underwater light faceted
in the enormous aquamarine
set in bronzed stones.
A pale green mist lifts from the pool
...

Mildew flowers are blooming
on the ceiling
sugar ants sashay across the floor
the walls are stretching
...

There you are again
with your face of winter
back rachetted straight
lips lost in a vicious line
...

I can never see you clearly
not the way friends and lovers,
enemies and strangers do.
...

Half a century and more
living as a woman
in the Western democratic world

...

Idyllic love poems wander the hills
with a pining goat herd playing his pipe
and singing mournful song
...